Our local newspapers are being merged, purged, shrunk, shut down, and looted by Wall Street profiteers – yet there’s good news. In the towns those media vultures are torching, a phoenix is rising!

Hundreds of determined locals, often led by people of color, are finding new ways to pay for and revive top-quality, local journalism. For example, the Ferndale (CA) Enterprise moved to an old Victorian home, renting upstairs rooms to vacationers to subsidize the paper. Also, while aloof Wall Street owners have no connection to us or our towns, the scrappy new community papers are stressing their grassroots connection by moving into friendlier, more central, street-level spaces – such as public libraries and community centers – so that regular people can see them and have direct access to their reporters and editors. Then there’s the editor of the Sahan Journal in Minneapolis, who moves his weekly editorial meeting to the offices of various grassroots groups so their members can help shape the paper’s coverage. And in Marfa, Texas, the Big Bend Sentinel is literally serving the public, not only with a good weekly, but also with The Sentinel – a combo coffee shop, cozy bar, cafe, event space, and hangout for locals to meet and greet.

In ways big and small, dedicated local journalists are experimenting with funding, structures, staffing, etc., to produce the news that democracy requires. Note to Wall Street vultures: These newspaper ventures aren’t interested in “scaling-up” to maximize investor profits. As they know, it was corporate cost-cutting, consolidation, and “scaling” that got us into today’s mess of journalistic collapse. Instead, by sharing ideas and resources, these local innovators help each other succeed. And, unlike the Wall Street model, their success is not measured simply by financial return, but also by how they do at keeping citizens informed and engaged.

Now that’s real journalism.

Mega-investor Warren Buffett once held a big portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers, and he specialized in squeezing out competitors so each held a local monopoly. Then he’d chop staff and news content, letting him glean annual profit margins above 30%.

But alas for poor Warren, along came the internet, allowing people to root around for free to find local information missing from his hollowed-out papers. They began losing readers, advertisers, and profits, so, in 2020, Buffett sold out his entire portfolio. But rather than concede that maybe his slash-and-burn, profit-maximization approach had produced inferior products, “The Oracle of Omaha” (as Wall Street had labeled him) blasted the whole idea of local newspapers as dinosaurs. They’re “toast,” he proclaimed.

But wait your Oracleness, when done right, local publications both chronicle and help shape a community’s story. And that’s a social benefit that’s as valuable – and as marketable – as ever. It’s not that people have given up on local news, but that corporate owned papers did – they’re not local, not newsy, and not of, by, and for the workaday people in our communities.

For example, nearly every corporate daily publishes a business section, which mostly amounts to yesterday’s stock prices, corporate press releases, and syndicated filler. Does even 1% of the population read that stuff? Meanwhile, how about economic news of interest to the great majority of locals who’re workaday families? Where’s the regular section that digs into the area’s wages, job losses and openings, workplace conditions, childcare availability, unionizing efforts, and other real-life issues that confront this majority on a daily basis?

The relevant indicator of the wellbeing of nearly every American family is not the Dow Jones Average (which newspapers cover obsessively), but the Doug Jones Average. How are Doug and Donna doing? That’s news that would sell papers.

An old political truism notes that, “Where there’s a will, there are 1,000 won’ts.”

And what a hurricane of won’ts swirled out of Washington’s power centers in March to pummel Joe Biden! Corporate lobbyists and their congressional hirelings howled at him for declaring that he would seek a tax increase on corporations to pay for the essential, overdue job of repairing and expanding our nation’s antiquated, dilapidated infrastructure. Blowhard Mitch McConnell, the GOP’s senate leader, blustered that poor corporate America should not be singled out to bear this “burden.”

But wait –Mitch singled out the corporate giants in 2017 to receive a massive cut in their tax rate, so even with a slight increase now they’ll still pay much less than regular people.

Also, the giants wormed loopholes in the law to cut their taxes further. Indeed, 55 of the biggest, most profitable corporations paid zero in US income taxes last. As Bernie Sanders points out: “If you paid $120 for a pair of [Nike] shoes, you paid more to Nike than it paid in federal income taxes over the past 3 years, while it made $4.1 billion in profits.”

Mitch and his fellow hypocrites cynically profess they support restoring America’s infrastructure – but, he says, asking our corporate political funders to pay more “is not going to get support from our side.”

So, who do they want to pay for it? You. Working people and the poor! Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and a leader of Mitch’s team, points to putting more user fees on drivers and adding taxes on consumers as the way to go.

To see a list of other major corporate scofflaws who’ve been pocketing billions in profits, yet paying zilch for the upkeep of America, go to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy: ITEP.org.

It’s time for America to go back to the future – a future of true greatness created by a people united to build a strong nation for the Common Good.

From the start of our United States, Americans have backed leaders who dared to do big public projects – Jefferson, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, and LBJ all dared to achieve bold goals.

It’s only since Ronald Reagan’s “government-is-evil” demagoguery that our presidents and lawmakers shriveled to no-can-do mediocrities, unwilling even to try tackling America’s big needs or invest in our people’s unlimited possibilities. Their failure is why our nation’s infrastructure – once world-class – has deteriorated to an embarrassing 16th in the world. It’s hard to muster any national pride in chanting: “We’re Number 16!”

But – surprise! – here comes Joe, a lifelong, go-slow Democrat, unexpectedly proposing a get-serious, roll-up-our-sleeves, $2-trillion package of investments to modernize, and extend Americas collapsing infrastructure. In addition to roads, bridges, and dams, it gives a long overdue boost to such needs as rural high-speed broadband, replacing lead water pipes, building clean energy systems, constructing affordable housing, upgrading public transit systems, increasing home healthcare for the elderly and providing affordable childcare facilities – all geared to creating good union jobs and lifting local economies.

Even more transformative than the particular components is Biden’s back-to-the-future method of paying for this Rebuild America agenda by returning to progressive taxation. Instead of the same old no-tax, laissez-fairyland extremism that Washington has practiced for 40 years (leading to the deep infrastructure hole we’re now in), Biden will at long last demand that multinational corporate behemoths stop dodging their tax obligations to America. It’s the same fair-taxation policy that funded our nation’s real needs in the past, while also increasing productivity and raising living standards for millions of working families.

Let’s do it again!

Most people believe the American economy is being rigged by and for bankers, CEOs, and other superrich elites, because… well, because it is!

With their hired armies of lawmakers, lobbyists, lawyers, and the like, they fix the economic rules so even-more of society’s money and power flows uphill to them. Take corporate CEOs. While 2020 was somewhere between a downer and devastating for most people, the CEO class made out like bandits, with each of the three top paid corporate honchos pocketing as much as a billion dollars in personal pay!

Are they geniuses, or what? What. All three of their corporations ended 2020 with big financial losses and declining value. So how can such mediocrity produce such lavish rewards? Simple – rig the pay machine.

Today’s corporate system of setting compensation for top executives is a flimflam disguised as a model of management rectitude. On its face, it sounds good – “Pay for performance,” it’s called, meaning the CEO does well if the company does well.

But who defines “doing well?” The scam at most major corporations is that the standard of corporate performance that the chief must meet to quality for a huge payday is set by each corporation’s board of directors. Guess who they are? Commonly, board members are the CEO’s handpicked brothers-in-law, golfing buddies, and corporate cronies. So, they set the bar for winning multimillion-dollar executive paychecks so low that a sack of concrete could jump over it.

Well, insist these flimflammers, corporate shareholders are the ultimate stopgap against CEO greed. These “owners” can just vote “no” on any executive pay they consider excessive. However, even “shareholder democracy” is rigged – corporate rules decree that votes by shareholders are merely “advisory,” meaning top executives can simply ignore them, grab the money, and run. This system is fixed... and we need to break it!

Exciting news from Wall Street: Our wealth markets are booming!

Everything from the Dow Jones Average to gold prices are rocketing to new records, showering us with wealth from above. Oh… wait. Maybe you’re one of the big majority of workaday Americans who don’t own stocks or gold, so maybe you’re not celebrating Wall Street’s big boom. But just chill, because conventional corporate wisdom assures us that the wealthy will invest their good fortunes in enterprises that eventually will produce trickle-down gains for everyone.

Excuse my rudeness, but let’s take a peek at how those who’re reaping today’s big-buck bonanza are actually investing that wealth. Look at Wall Streeters themselves. The big banks have been making money like… well, like bankers, with their stock prices zooming up by 28 percent just since January. So, how are these moneyed elites spending this windfall? Not by making job-creating investments, but by simply giving the money to their big shareholders, including their own top executives – nearly all of whom are already among the richest people on Earth.

The main way they do this is through a slight-of-hand called a “stock buyback.” The honchos simply cash out the bulk of that 28 percent increase in the value of the banks’ stock price, using that money to repurchase more of their banks’ own stock from lesser shareholders. Hocus-pocus, this manipulation artificially pumps-up the value of the stock these insider shareholders already own – making each of them even richer than rich, although they’ve done absolutely nothing to earn this increased wealth.

It’s not a small scam. JPMorgan Chase is now sinking $30 billion into buying its own stock. Wells Fargo is shifting $18 billion into the scheme, and Bank of America is throwing $25 billion into its buyback. Hello – Wall Street bankers are the biggest robbers in America.